Performing Arts: Year In Review 2005

Originally published in the Britannica Book of the Year. Presented as archival content. Learn more.

This article was originally published in the Britannica Book of the Year, an annual print publication that
provides an overview of the year’s most-notable people and events.
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Classical Music

Any cultural tradition that endures and flourishes for a thousand years must move at a considered pace. Thus it was that a mere five years late, in 2005 classical music entered the 21st century. The move, when it came, was not heralded by a revolution in sound—as with the new music of Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg at the turn of the previous century—as much as a new sensibility, one that opened the doors to fresh ideas and realities.

In June the BBC offered free downloads of Beethoven’s nine symphonies on the Internet. The performances, by conductor Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic, were drawn from the network’s The Beethoven Experience series. Initially the offer was made as an experiment to gauge interest in the music on the part of the public. By the end of the month, the experiment had turned into a phenomenon; listeners downloaded the music 1.4 million times in two one-week periods (Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony proved to be the most popular, drawing 220,461 downloads). The immensity of the response—comparable to that of hit recordings by pop music artists—attested to the enduring popularity of classical music. In a more tangible sense, however, it offered the flagging classical music industry new insights and business models for making the product available to the public via the distribution of “virtual” classical recordings that could expand the form’s accessibility and commercial viability.

Classical music also combined with the digital realm in February when the world’s largest music publisher, London-based Boosey & Hawkes, concluded a deal with the Music Solution, London, in which the former made available the rights to themes from 300 popular classical music pieces, including “Russian Dance” from Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” for use as ringtones on cellular phones.

The classical world flirted with another pop culture phenomenon in the form of the “Dear Friends” concert tour, which traversed the U.S. during the year. The program featured music by Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu from the immensely popular video game series Final Fantasy. The tour suggested yet another way in which the classical world could reach out to younger listeners, many of whom had inadvertently been introduced to classical music via the sound tracks to the games.

In a more traditional sense, composers and orchestras continued their public outreach efforts by launching their own labels. Following the lead of the London Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony, the London Philharmonic Orchestra founded its own record label and in April issued its initial releases, which included two archive recordings and two recent live performances of works by Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergey Rachmaninoff. Released from a contract with Deutsche Grammophon, which had undertaken to fund his project of recording all of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sacred cantatas, conductor John Eliot Gardiner started his own label, Soli Deo Gloria, which issued its first recordings during the year. Meanwhile, two British composers were taking matters into their own hands. Michael Nyman (best known for film scores such as that for The Piano [1993]) and the venerable Scottish iconoclast Peter Maxwell Davies also formed their own respective record labels. “My motivation is pure greed,” Nyman assured The Guardian newspaper, “but it’s a greed to get as much of my music as possible out there for the public to sample.”

Even when technology and business innovations were not involved, change was in the air. Finally entering the 20th century—albeit in the 21st—the classical world was rocked when Marin Alsop was named music director of the Baltimore Symphony. She thus became the first woman to attain such a post at a major American orchestra.

Space—and a galaxy far, far away—figured in two new musical works that made their debuts in 2005. In June conductor Erich Kunzel’s adaptation of composer John Williams’s score for the six Star Wars films was presented by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Also in June the British Institute of Physics paid tribute to physicist Albert Einstein with its Heavenly Music workshop event at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, in which the recorded sounds of stars, planets, and galaxies were mixed into a celestial musical work. (See Physical Sciences: Special Report.)

On CD and DVD, classical music celebrated the new and old. The January 2000 world premiere of English composer John Tavener’s choral work Fall and Resurrection was released on an Opus Arte DVD, while up-and-coming Danish virtuoso Nikolaj Znaider was highlighted in performances of the Beethoven and Mendelssohn violin concertos. The independent Bridge label began to release a series of historic recordings of performances at the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress, which marked its 80th anniversary in 2005. On a similar note, officials of Germany’s Bayreuth Festival released a 13-CD set of the 1956 staging of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle, featuring Hans Hotter in the role of Wotan and Astrid Varnay as Brünnhilde. The digital clarity of DVDs came to the assistance of two French baroque operas, highlighting the visuals and dancing that were as important to that form as the music itself. Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Persée (EuroArts) was captured in a production by Hervé Niquet and the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir, while Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes galantes (Opus Arte) was given a fanciful reading by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants. Herbert Henck demonstrated the delicate, surprisingly melodic side of the young John Cage on piano pieces that included “The Seasons” and “Metamorphosis” on an ECM New Series CD. Alsop and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra provided a look at Kurt Weill—before he was seduced by the musical theatre—on performances of his first and second symphonies on the Naxos label. Arguably one of the most intriguing recordings of the year was The Five Browns (RCA), which showcased five siblings performing energetic and vivacious five-piano adaptations of such warhorses as Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Flight of the Bumblebee and Paul Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Older works were given a rebirth during the year. A fragment from a previously unheard piano concerto by Beethoven was given its premiere in The Netherlands in February by pianist Ronald Brautigam and the Rotterdam Chamber Orchestra. Two works by Antonio Vivaldi were given their modern premieres; a concert version of the Italian Baroque master’s opera Motezuma was presented in Rotterdam in June, and a full production was staged in Düsseldorf, Ger., in September, its first performances since 1733. An aria, “De torrente in via bibet,” recently reattributed to Vivaldi, was performed in Melbourne in August. A manuscript of a “ritornello aria” by J.S. Bach was found in the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Ger., in May; it was the first discovery of a previously unknown vocal work by Bach since 1935. At year’s end music scholars at Vienna’s Musikverein were attempting to authenticate a manuscript that bore the name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

A host of new operas appeared during the year, two of which illustrated the ways in which the worlds of classical and pop music were merging. In October the Royal Danish Opera presented the world premiere of a 10-song cycle from pop songwriter Elvis Costello’s opera-in-progress, The Secret Arias, based on the unrequited love of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen for Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. In September Roger Waters, formerly of the psychedelic rock group Pink Floyd, unveiled his first opera, Ça Ira, on CD and DVD. Electronics composer Charles Wuorinen delved deeply into his 12-tone abstractions in his opera Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which received its premiere at the New York City Opera late in 2004. James Fenton’s libretto was based on the book by Salman Rushdie. Also in New York, composer Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy was given its debut by the Metropolitan Opera. Philip Glass’s Waiting for the Barbarians debuted in Erfurt, Ger., in September. The two-and-a-half-hour work was based on South African writer J.M. Coetzee’s book about the evils of state-sponsored repression. In October, two months after the 60th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, John Adams’s Doctor Atomic was presented by the San Francisco Opera. The work was based on the efforts of a team of scientists led by J. Robert Oppenheimer that led to the detonation of the atomic bomb in 1945. The Glass and Adams works were acclaimed by critics and the public, but other new operas—and new productions of older operas—did not fare as well. Conductor Lorin Maazel’s operatic version of George Orwell’s novel 1984 was lambasted by critics following its debut at London’s Royal Opera, and in August the British premiere of Adams’s 1991 opera The Death of Klinghoffer created a furor over its staging, in which members of the Scottish Opera stormed the stage from the audience as terrorists with mock machine guns.

Some new stagings of Wagner operas created controversies as well. German film producer and director Bernd Eichinger came under critical fire in March for his depiction in a production at Berlin’s Staatsoper of the knights in Parsifal as punk rockers. At Bayreuth, Swiss director Christoph Marthaler’s new staging of Tristan und Isolde was booed during its unveiling in July, and the English National Opera raised the ire of critics and public with its version of Götterdämmerung, which called for Brünnhilde to strap on a bomb and blow up herself and the cast in a simulated suicide attack.

All those controversies paled in comparison to the exit of longtime music director Riccardo Muti from Milan’s fabled La Scala. Muti, who had led the company for 19 years, was accused by his staff and musicians of running La Scala like a fiefdom. The dispute ended acrimoniously in April, when Muti resigned, citing irreconcilable differences. One of opera’s most generous and ostentatious benefactors, the Cuban-American investor Alberto Vilar, suffered a similarly operatic downfall. Vilar, who had donated millions of dollars to various major opera companies, was arrested in May and charged with having defrauded a business client of $5 million. Oboist Blair Tindall raised eyebrows with her book Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music when it was published in June; the tell-all tome recounted alleged cases of orchestral in-fighting and substance abuse by classical musicians. Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel lowered brows when in January, after suddenly losing his voice, he mimed a portrayal of Wotan at London’s Covent Garden while another singer sang the role.

The classical world was amazed and mystified during much of the year by the appearance of the so-called Piano Man, who was found wandering on a beach in Kent, Eng., in April and reportedly stunned mental health workers by giving virtuoso performances of classical music on a piano. Months later he was finally identified as 20-year-old Andreas Grassl from the German village of Prosdorf. Neither a satisfactory explanation of the circumstances of his appearance nor the particulars of his care under British health authorities were forthcoming.

Recipients of top musical awards in 2005 included French composer Henri Dutilleux, who was honoured with the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. The Pulitzer Prize for Music went to Steven Stucky’s Second Concerto for Orchestra, while the Grammy Award for best classical recording was given to John Adams for On the Transmigration of Souls (2002), his large-scale work commemorating the victims of the 9/11 terrorist bombings in New York City.

Jazz

In 2005 the jazz world reeled from the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina on the New Orleans jazz community. Though most musicians scattered for safety, some outlasted the storm in the city, including noted trumpeter Marlon Jordan, who was discovered after having spent five days clinging to a rooftop. In the following weeks, radio station WWOZ, though it did not broadcast, maintained a list on its Web site of musicians who had survived the storm. Even if musicians were able to return home, the city’s jazz venues remained closed. Two noted New Orleans bands, Astral Project and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, toured widely during the autumn. Hurricane relief efforts were established quickly, most notably by the New York-based Jazz Foundation of America, through its Jazz Musician Emergency Fund. The most famous of the many fund-raising concerts was held by New Orleans native Wynton Marsalis at Lincoln Center in New York City and included, along with his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, a parade of jazz, pop music, and movie stars. The New Orleans Jazz Museum, housed in the old U.S. Mint building, was reportedly battered by the storm. The Historic New Orleans Collection, where Jelly Roll Morton’s papers and other valuable research material were safeguarded, was not damaged, however, and reopened in its French Quarter location six weeks after the storm. The important collection of the Hogan Jazz Archive, housed at Tulane University, was unscathed. The lack of electricity in the hot, humid weeks that followed the storm, however, could have damaged some archived documents that might have deteriorated as a result of the absence of climate-controlled conditions.

In New York City, Lincoln Center began living up to its promise as a major jazz centre, with concerts on three stages that included during September a Women in Jazz Festival in its nightclub, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. On the Lower East Side, the Vision Festival’s six evenings of music included a stunning performance by trumpeter Bill Dixon’s quintet and a nightlong tribute to 76-year-old tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson. Though real-estate developers in Chicago announced plans to level Anderson’s nightclub, the Velvet Lounge, successful fund-raising efforts would allow Anderson to move his popular jazz spot.

Actor Rome Neal portrayed composer-pianist Thelonious Monk in the New York City one-man show Monk, written by Laurence Holder. Bassist Christian McBride was named co-director, along with arranger Loren Schoenberg, of the Jazz Museum in Harlem, a project that had yet to find a permanent home. Saxophonist John Zorn, whose Tzadik label issued CDs by exploratory composers and improvisers, opened a nightclub, the Stone, which featured jazz six nights a week.

The 40th anniversary of the cooperative Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians was celebrated in the AACM’s Chicago and New York City concerts and at a conference during the Ai Confini tra Sardegna e Jazz Festival in Sant’Anna Arresi, on the Italian island of Sardinia. The festival’s performers included AACM members Muhal Richard Abrams (piano), Anthony Braxton (saxophones), and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, as well as Japan’s Shibura Shirazu Orchestra. During a two-day Brazilian cultural symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the bossa nova was featured in the North American premiere of Jobim sinfônico, composed by Antonio Carlos Jobim and performed by the Symphony of the Americas, with Claudio Cruz conducting. Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes’s seldom-heard 1960 work Brasília, sinfonia da alvorada, honouring the building of Brazil’s new capital, Brasília, was featured in a version of Jobim sinfônico recorded by the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Roberto Minczuk.

Two discoveries of major performances by jazz greats highlighted the year’s recordings. The Dizzy Gillespie Quintet with Charlie Parker played the electrifying Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945. A 1957 Voice of America broadcast, unearthed in the Library of Congress, was the source of Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall. One of the first appearances by a Miles Davis fusion group was the historically important six-CD set The Cellar Door Sessions 1970. The highlight of the 2005 reissues was The Complete Library of Congress Recordings by pioneer pianist-composer Morton, recorded in 1938 and finally available in an eight-CD set.

Though only two major labels still focused on jazz, musician-owned labels proliferated during the year. Trumpeter Dave Douglas’s Greenleaf label issued his Mountain Passages, and saxophonist Branford Marsalis’s Marsalis Music offered Miguel Zenón’s Jíbaro and Harry Connick, Jr.’s instrumental set Occasion, duets by the pianist and Marsalis. Saxophonist Evan Parker’s Psi label reissued the free-improvisation landmark recording The London Concert with Parker and guitarist Derek Bailey.

More than 70 Monk songs were offered, almost all he ever composed, in the three-CD Monk’s Casino by pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach’s quintet. Not in Our Name by bassist Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra featured a composition by Carla Bley, and pianist Dave Brubeck’s quartet offered London Flat, London Sharp.

Outstanding biographies published during the year included those by Doug Ramsey (Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond), Nadine Cohodas (Queen: The Life and Music of Dinah Washington; 2004), and Michael Dregni (Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend; 2004), about guitarist Django Reinhardt. Deaths included those of bassist Percy Heath, singer-songwriter Oscar Brown, Jr., trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, saxophonist Lucky Thompson, and pianist Shirley Horn. Other losses during the year were those of bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and guitarist Billy Bauer.

Popular

International

Much of the world’s finest and most varied music of 2005 originated in the landlocked African state of Mali. There were three notable albums by Malian artists during the year. The most commercially successful came from Amadou and Mariam, a middle-aged blind couple who had been singing and playing together since the 1970s. Their dramatic change of fortune came about when the Spanish star Manu Chao offered to produce, co-write, and perform on their latest album, Dimanche à Bamako. Sections of the recording echoed Chao’s own work, but other tracks focused on the duo’s easygoing songs, embellished by slick singing and impressive blues-influenced guitar work from Amadou. The album was a major success in Europe.

The two other great Malian albums came from established veterans. Five years earlier guitarist Ali Farka Touré had announced that he had retired to his farm in the town of Niafunké, where he became mayor. In 2005, however, he made a welcome return, accompanied for the first time by Toumani Diabate, the greatest exponent of the kora, the African classical harp. Their album In the Heart of the Moon mixed Touré’s hypnotic blueslike guitar work with virtuoso flurries of rapid-fire improvised kora playing. Diabate made a further appearance on the new album by Salif Keita, Mali’s finest male singer. After years of working abroad, Keita had returned to Bamako to live and record, and his magnificent homecoming album, M’Bemba, was a gently rhythmic, largely acoustic set in which he was also backed by guitarist Kante Manfila and his own foster sisters.

If Africa was much in the political limelight during 2005 with the Group of Eight meeting in Scotland focusing on African development issues, it was also a good year for African music. A series of Africa-related events across the U.K. were mounted to inspire and encourage the politicians. These included concerts, art exhibitions, and a lecture by Senegalese musician Baaba Maal at the British Museum. Rock musician and humanitarian Bob Geldof helped to organize the ambitious Live 8 concert in London and nine other cities to call attention to world poverty on the eve of the G-8 meeting. The London Live 8 event included such notables as U2, Madonna, Paul McCartney, and Pink Floyd. Senegal’s Youssou N’Dour appeared there too before flying to another awareness-raising concert in Cornwall that featured African stars Tinariwen and Thomas Mapfumo, among others.

New collaborations and fusions were another highlight of music in 2005. The veteran Indian singer Asha Bhosle, who had recorded thousands of songs for the Bollywood film industry, joined forces with the adventurous Kronos Quartet from the U.S. to record an album of classic movie songs written by her late husband, R.D. Burman. Adventurous musical fusion work came from Mexico as well. The acoustic-guitar-playing duo of Rodrigo y Gabriela followed up their album Live Manchester and Dublin with a series of virtuoso concerts in which they mixed anything from jazz to Spanish influences to heavy metal. Other Mexican musicians, Los de Abajo, provided an even greater contrast of styles with their album LDA v the Lunatics, which included a Latin treatment of the 1980s hit by the Fun Boy Three, “The Lunatics (Have Taken Over the Asylum),” along with songs that ranged from salsa to punk and Mexican styles.

It was also a good year for Brazil’s minister of culture, veteran singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil, who followed his live album Eletracústico with a series of rousing shows proving that politics had not harmed his impressively varied musical skills. Brazil’s latest celebrity, Seu Jorge, came to worldwide attention through his appearances in the films City of God and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, but his album Cru and live shows demonstrated his ability to switch from a quirky treatment of David Bowie songs in Portuguese to light dance songs and thoughtful ballads.

Among the international musicians who died in 2005 were Ibrahim Ferrer, one of the greatest of all Cuban singers; Lalo Guerrero, called the father of Chicano music; and reggae star Justin Hinds. (See Obituaries.)

United States

The year 2005 in American pop music began with hoots and howls as pop singer and reality-television star Ashlee Simpson was booed lustily during her off-pitch performance at halftime of college football’s national championship game at the Orange Bowl in Miami. It was the second nationally televised embarrassment for Simpson, who had been caught using a prerecorded vocal track on Saturday Night Live two months earlier. Simpson sang her way to some measure of redemption in October, however, when she reappeared on Saturday Night Live, offered a truly live performance, and was cheered.

Also, January 2005 saw the start of a year of benefit concerts as Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Kenny Chesney, and numerous other artists participated in Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope, a telethon broadcast from New York, Los Angeles, and London. The effort raised an estimated $18 million for relief of the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami. Later, performers banded together for charity shows that included July’s massive Live 8 event and numerous concerts in September to raise money for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

The late Ray Charles received the lion’s share of accolades at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in February. Charles was remembered with eight Grammys, including the album and record of the year prizes. Together, rhythm and blues superstars Alicia Keys and Usher won a total of seven Grammys, and Kanye West and rock band U2 each won three. Country music’s Tim McGraw won the awards for best country male vocal and best song for “Live like You Were Dying.” The show’s considerable star power did not save television ratings, however, which were the lowest for a Grammy presentation show since 1995.

The year saw some significant stylistic developments. A subgenre of Latin music called reggaeton, which combined elements of hip-hop and reggae, galvanized young Spanish-speaking audiences and became a springboard to stardom for Don Omar, Daddy Yankee, Luny Tunes, and others. The hushed avant-folk sounds of acts such as Devendra Banhart and Iron and Wine garnered substantial popularity and critical praise. Meanwhile, the ubiquitous nature of technology such as Apple Computer’s iPod—a digital audio player that could store music downloaded via computer—made nonmainstream music more readily available to consumers.

Rock music made something of a comeback in 2005, with Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails, Audioslave, and other rock acts topping the Billboard all-genre album chart. Country artist Chesney had an eventful year as well. His Be as You Are: Songs from an Old Blue Chair album debuted at number one on the Billboard Top 200 album chart in February; he won the Academy of Country Music Awards top entertainer prize; and his album The Road and the Radio, released in November, was a commercial standout.

The year’s most significant court decision for the music industry was a unanimous Supreme Court decision on June 27 that favoured copyright holders (record companies, songwriters, and artists) against peer-to-peer software providers StreamCast and Grokster. Officials at major record companies saw the ruling as a way to discourage the illegal copying of music. In July, New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer reached a settlement with Sony BMG Music in which the company paid $10 million in fines related to allegedly improper means of influencing radio airplay.

The sales story of the year was hard-core rapper 50 Cent, whose album The Massacre sold more than four million copies. Other commercial successes included Mariah Carey’s The Emancipation of Mimi, which had sold 3.4 million by mid-October, and Kanye West’s Late Registration, which sold nearly a million copies in its first week of release. West’s “Gold Digger,” 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop,” Carey’s “We Belong Together,” and Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” were some of the biggest radio singles.